


Sing Me Symphonies

by remembertowrite



Series: When Pandora Met Occam [1]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: As much of a 'character study' this can be anyway, Character Study, F/M, Season 1, Smut, Strand-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 02:45:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7416571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remembertowrite/pseuds/remembertowrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shoots a dirty glance at Alex, and she smirks back at him, lazily swishing around the last drops of liquid in her wine glass. The daisy of her blouse is a shocking yellow against the red flush creeping down her neck.</p><p>Or: the NSFW prequel to When Pandora Met Occam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Me Symphonies

**Author's Note:**

> This was the fic I started and restarted over the past week, and I can't believe it's done. 
> 
> Set immediately before "When Pandora Met Occam."

He tries to follow along with Dr. Rodriguez’s intriguing line of discussion to the semi-circle of socializing academics—something about a new study on selective perception that was just published in _Neuroscience_ —but the bare shoulder that keeps knocking into his forearm is rather distracting. He’s long since abandoned his heavy suit jacket, the heat prickling at his back and the persuasiveness of three whiskeys on the rocks making him not so self-conscious about the formality of the evening. He almost regrets rolling the sleeves of his pressed button-up up past his elbows, but the kiss of skin on skin, soft shoulder on tensed forearm, is enough to put that thought to rest.

He shoots a dirty glance at Alex, and she smirks back at him, lazily swishing around the last drops of liquid in her wine glass. The daisy of her blouse is a shocking yellow against the red flush creeping down her neck.

He tries his hardest not to notice the dip of her V-neck as she leans forward and up to speak low in his ear.

“I was promised interviews,” she says, her breath warming his earlobe. “Everything I’ve got is _way_ too boring for our audience.” Alex draws out ‘way,’ as if she’s one of his more foolish-sounding students hailing from California. It’s a departure from her normal sharp-witted manner of speech.

“And this concept of selective perception doesn’t interest you?” he whispers back to her, trying to divert her attention back to the topic at hand, but it’s pointless: she’s monopolized all of his receptive ability. He’s missed at least a minute of insight from one of the University of Washington-Seattle’s best and brightest.

She rolls her eyes in an exaggerated fashion and hits him lightly on the shoulder with her palm.

“It doesn’t bring any particular individuals to mind?” he asks pointedly, but it comes across more in jest than in derision. There’s something infectious about Alex’s juvenile need for more stimulating conversation.

It’s easy for her to get the best of him, to draw the quick breath of a laugh out of him with whatever ridiculous quip she has.

“I’m getting another drink,” she grumbles in mock offense, but she flashes him an impish grin and offers a giggle before she scurries away like a crab into sand.

He turns back to the scholarly conversation. One researcher snorts out a nasally laugh that reminds Richard of his father, and Richard finds on second evaluation that Dr. Rodriguez lacks the magnetism of Alex Reagan, the reporter who can charm her way into interviews with grieving mothers and reticent police officers.

That, and it suddenly dawns on him that his plus one to the conference reception probably needs to drive herself home tonight, and might be making another of her trademark bad decisions with further imbibing of choice beverages.

Richard excuses himself with a polite nod at his neighbor and takes off towards the bar, breaking into a half-jog, and realizes maybe he shouldn’t be judging his journalist attaché quite so harshly.

Whiskey can be a great deceiver.

He locates Alex at the bar, her eyes glazed over and her cheek resting in her hand as a youngish professor next to her drawls on. She takes a large sip of whatever sickly sweet abomination of a proper cocktail she’s holding, and her eyes flick around the room.

She perks up like a lost puppy at the sight of him.

Watching the self-satisfied grin melt off her forgotten paramour’s face shouldn’t feel nearly as satisfying as it does. In his weaker moments, he allows himself indulgences of vanity: how fast a thinker, how clever, how quick and smartly presented he is, how gratifying it is to draw a pretty woman’s rapt attention and have her record his intellectualism for the masses.

Is it really a character flaw if he’s always right?

He heads towards his errant partner. When he’s within a short distance of the bar, Alex downs the rest of her drink, slams the cocktail glass down in a way that makes him wince, and hops out of the bar seat to head towards him.

Or so she attempts, but she’s misjudged the dismount. Her right ankle rolls in a way it shouldn’t, and she lets out a muffled yelp of pain. He rushes forward and catches Alex by the arm.

“Shit,” she hisses, groping for his shoulder but landing her grasp on his bicep instead. She’s so small.

“Are you injured?” he asks as she presses her eyes shut, her lips a thin line of suppressed pain.

The bar patrons all stare at them, and he detects Alex’s discomfort with the situation.

He prides himself on his perceptiveness, after all.

“Come with me. We should get some ice.”

It’s a painfully slow trek to the elevator bay. Her tiny, vulnerable form clings to his side, her fingers hot and digging into the tense muscles at the base of his neck. He averts his eyes from her slightly mussed hair and the gaping at the front of their shirt. His height can be a curse.

They ride up the elevator in silence. Alex doesn’t let go. She gazes at the floor, shamefaced, and he is at once painfully aware of her tiny body pressed against his.

Her pitiful state is enough to convince him that he’s going to call her a cab tonight. Before any other would-be suitors can accost her.

The elevator doors open, and Alex tries applying some pressure on her injured ankle. She’s able to better navigate the empty hallway, away from the judging eyes of the bar crowd. He loosens his hold on her, guiding her towards his room so she’ll have somewhere to sit down while he fetches ice from the ice machine across the floor.

He fishes his wallet out of his pocket and taps it on the keypad to open the door. Alex lets go of his upper arm and slowly makes her way inside, and he follows.

She stumbles and grabs for his arm, hooking her fingers into the cuff of his sleeve. She crashes back into the wall, and he catches himself with a hand above her shoulder so as not to fall on top of her.

The door clicks shut in muted finality, and then the only sound is Alex’s heavy exhales and his own breathing.

Her brown eyes pierce his own, and he gazes back at her, and the want is visceral, cracking through the vague outlines of futures he’s seen in half-daydreams, in flights of useless fantasy.

Perhaps it’s the intensity of Alex’s gaze, or the audacious spontaneity the whiskey’s gifted him, or the augmented egotism of winning against another would-be paramour, or maybe it’s none of those, maybe he just _wants_ : He kisses her, unsolicited, a hail Mary pass.

She’s frozen, and he can hear her accelerated heartbeat pounding in her ears and his.

This may have been a terrific mistake. The unpredictability of the moment-to-moment is positively intoxicating.

He breaks the kiss and in turn stares at Alex. Her face is the blank mask of an animal trapped between fight and flight.

He’s always been shit at gambling. This was a bad bet.

“Alex—I’m—I apologi—”

She cuts him off with a return kiss, brutal and bruising in its intensity. She nips at his bottom lip. It stings.

She devours him like a starving creature, her hands raking along his neck and tearing at his tie until she loosens it entirely and whips it out of his collar. A sliver of milky skin peeks out above her skirt, her sheer blouse hitched up with her raised arms, and he breaks her kiss to remove the confounded yellow thing. She lifts her arms obediently, a low hum in her throat, and he swears her body _sings_ to him as he raises the top off of her entirely.

It’s a relief to not have to avert his eyes, and there’s the lacy white bra he’s been subconsciously aware of for most of the evening. It’s a dainty, pretty thing, and he pauses to wonder at the sheer uselessness of it; for those for whom the intricate decoration is intended are the ones who most want to rid the wearer of the garment.

Alex snorts, laughter glimmering in her eyes.

“It’s a bra, Richard. You don’t need a PhD to handle it.”

The corners of his mouth spasm upwards. There’s Alex again, the one he’s best acquainted with: the ridiculous wit of hers, the quick quips that he now recognizes as attempts at subtle flirtation.

And there’s her characteristic impatience, her dissatisfaction with leaving anything unfinished: she’s working through the buttons on his shirt and tugging at his cuffed sleeves while he’s lost in thought.

Her forwardness inspires a twitch of his erection; he can feel it struggling against the zipper of his pants, desperate to explore the depths and delights of Alex’s body. He allows himself another moment of vanity, for here he is, with an attractive and extremely capable woman disrobing him in the dark of his hotel room, the city lights casting a glow on her pretty, eager face. He recognizes it as the same eagerness, the same curiosity Alex has towards any new black tape case he shows her. Her passionate fascination with his work and his cleverness is enough to douse any remaining doubts, and all he feels is a desperate need to fuck her senseless.

He pulls her with a little more force than necessary towards the bed, and she hisses in pain.

“My ankle,” she says.

He won’t be deterred, not when he’s finally given in to his baser desires.

He asks if she’s okay, and before she responds, he hoists her up and transports her the few paces to the bed.

“Thanks,” she tells him.

He nods, his cock painfully struggling against his pants, and presses her down into the bed, pulling himself over her. Alex’s fingers whisper along his bare stomach and chest, and he can’t stand it any longer. He tugs impatiently at her skirt with a quiet growl.

She laughs at him.

“Here, let me—”

She raises her pelvis up to ease the infernal garment off—and, wow, her underwear too, he wasn’t expecting to see those come off before her bra.

He wants desperately to grind into her, but he calms his nerves and retains a sense of decorum.

He plants a kiss on her bare stomach, his fingers ghosting along her inner thigh. Her body arches up, and he sees she’s wet and wanting. He probes her with his middle fingertip and she hums. He wants to make her sing; he wants to coax symphonies out of her lovely, red-stained lips; he wants her to scream verses to the empty heavens.

He thrusts fast and shallow. “Oh my God,” she whines, like a wan thing in heat. It’s delightful.

A second finger joins his first. She mewls and ruts against him faster, spewing further praises to some deity he’s pretty sure she’s agnostic about at best. She sits up and grabs a fistful of his hair, tugging him roughly towards her face to plant a sloppy kiss on his mouth.

Alex’s legs twitch of their own volition, the orgasm washing over her. Richard has witnessed many things, many fantastical and nigh unbelievable things, but a naked, quaking Alex Reagan bathed in faint streetlight is definitely one of the more magnificent things he’s seen. He absorbs the moment, retreating into himself to log the image into a hidden place in his brain where he stores other such precious secrets: wedding vows, a tiny baby snuggled into his arms for the first time, eleven phone calls returned on a whim.

He’s still inside of her as Alex inhales deeply, catching her breath. He can’t help but smirk at her, and she’s not having it. She wraps her leg around his waist and, with great effort, _flips him over_.

When did this tiny woman get so strong?

He’s absolutely elated. She frees him from the cruel prison of his belt and his slacks; he could nearly cry in relief when her smooth fingertips liberate his erection from his boxers and trace in circles on the head.

She teases him, her fingers delicate and barely touching the length of the shaft. He pushes himself up with his hands and, in a fit of annoyance or lust, nips at her neck. She squeaks in surprise, producing the desired effect. She starts pumping at a more reasonable rate. He shudders.

He cups her face and pulls her away from his. It’s hard to keep his thoughts straight or articulate anything beyond “Hnngg” while she’s touching him like this.

He makes a valiant second attempt and growls out her name. “ _Alex_.”

She slows her pace, and he misses the friction almost immediately.

“I don’t have—I don’t—I didn’t pack—” He can barely think, he just knows that he never planned this, and never with her, but good things happen at random intervals, as such is the nature of the universe.

He sees the exact moment comprehension dawns across her face, and it’s another of her expressions he cherishes. It’s oddly intimate, catching the exact point in time Alex comes to understand something he’s explaining to her, and he _loves_ it, watching that single-second realization as she opens up to greater understanding.

“It’s okay,” she says, and he envies her calmness. “I’m on birth control.”

He tries to grumble out something else, but his voice is deep and gravelly, and Alex is shoving him backwards with that hidden strength of hers, and—

 _Wow_.

He has to gain control of himself before he melts into Alex entirely. He wonders briefly if this is his personal rapture, if she’s going to fuck him to kingdom come, and he thrusts up into her at the thought.

She pushes back, coming down to capture him in another kiss, and he’s just lost in her. It’s hard and fast and messy and building, and he _wants_.

He groans impossibly low into her mouth, and he vaguely registers a groan in response from her.

She bucks aggressively against him, her charming “Oh my God” murmurs peppered in between her kisses. He grinds against her and tries to say her name in warning, but it comes out as a growl.

“Al-Alex.”

His cock is white hot and, for a few ecstatic seconds, he sees stars. His heart pounds like an out-of-tempo drum; he feels hot everywhere. He rubs Alex on her back and braces the curve of her side with his hands as she finishes after him.

He kisses her long and hard, and feels empty, somehow, when she rolls off him.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ,” she says, lying on her back, chest heaving, and he breaks into a weak laugh.

After a few minutes of breathing hard and staring at the ceiling, he rolls off the bed and digs around in his briefcase for a bottle of Ibuprofen. He locates his prize and returns to bed, runs his hand against Alex’s arm.

“How’s your ankle?” he asks her.

“Mmmmrph,” she groans at him, apparently perturbed at being woken.

He sighs, cards his fingers through her hair, and places a faint kiss on her forehead. He soaks in her slumbering form, existing in a state of muted shock.

Alex was right. Jesus _fucking_ Christ indeed.


End file.
